The Atheist and Agnostic Group, founded on June 13, 2004, is an internet forum with approximately 35,000 members on the social networking site MySpace targeted toward atheists and agnostics.[1] Due to its growing size and prominence as the largest group on MySpace dedicated to the subject of non-theism, the creator of the group was invited as a representative to The New Humanism conference at Harvard University on April 20 to April 22, 2007.[2] The growth rate of the group was about 10 000 per year.[3]
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The founder's Myspace account was accessed by phishing in 2007, with the result that the group was renamed, various users were banned, and discussions, the founder's account, and ultimately the entire group were deleted. The founder claims that this last action was made by Myspace itself responding to pressure from a coalition of Christians. The group was subsequently undeleted, however in 2008 while the founder of the group was emailing Myspace customer services to have users unbanned, the group was (apparently inadvertently) scheduled for deletion and subsequently removed. Once again, the founder believes this is a deliberate action by Myspace in response to pressure from Christians[1], and furthermore, he claims that Myspace now refuses to undelete it.[4]
The group has experienced several attacks on its infrastructure. On November 23, 2007, the group leader's password was phished, his profile destroyed, and the group taken over and renamed "Jesus is Love". More than half of the regular group members were banned outright, and many of the threads were deleted, including all threads that referred to the hack. This attack ended with the moderator deleting his Myspace profile. Many regulars of the group were banned from membership. On January 1, 2008, the moderator received a message from Myspace stating that the group was scheduled to be removed. Several minutes later, the group was deleted.[1]
Without any official comment on the part of MySpace, the group was restored on February 02, 2008. [5] Many of its members, however, remain banned.[6]
For a number of months at the end of 2010, all Myspace groups sections displayed the message "Myspace groups is getting an upgrade. It will be back better than ever". As of the beginning of January 2011, Myspace permanently retired Groups for good.